The Birds and The Bees (and Metamorphism)
by Dragon Elexus
Summary: Vidalia's sitting on the beach with an unplanned pregnancy and a dead-beat dad, explaining human reproduction to a tiny purple alien. She wishes she knew how her life got to this point.
**Author's Note:** This story has its rating for some harsh language, as well as discussion of sex, pregnancy and abortion. However, there is no actually sexually explicit material.

 **The Birds and The Bees (and Metamorphism)**

"You _have_ to know where he is! He's your goddamn manager, for fuck's sake—"

"He _was_. Vidalia! I'm sorry, I really have no idea where Marty is, I threw the guy out of my van—"

Vidalia growls, punching the side of his van. Greg winces. She does not.

She stands there, breathing heavily, eyes and fists clenched.

"Vidalia," says Greg, voice soft. "Is there anything else I can—?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I said _no_ , Universe," she snaps. "Just- just leave me alone."

She turns around, and stalks off down the beach. She doesn't look back, doesn't look where she's going, she doesn't care. She just needs— air. She just needs air.

Her skin feels hot, her eyes are burning, but there's this freezing pit somewhere deep inside, and her hand keeps moving towards her stomach, until she stops it, time and time again. She kicks at a rock angrily.

She hears the crunch of sand behind her.

She spins, furious. "Universe, I told you to _leave me al_ —"

It's not Greg.

It's the girl. The purple girl. Amethyst.

She's about five feet away, crouched low, like a dog that's prepared to run. She doesn't seem afraid, though. Her eyes are wide, curious. Sympathetic.

" _What_?" asks Vidalia.

Amethyst cocks her head, and says, "You're crying."

Vidalia's hand moves to her cheek. And yes, they're wet. She wipes the tears away, blinking.

She's not sure what to make of the girl. She's one of those magical people, who live in the weird statue behind the fence. Or, they used to. The fence is gone now. Greg drove through it, and they've been hanging around a lot more ever since.

The folks of Beach City have always had a long standing, unofficial policy of ignoring the weird ladies. Aside from fighting off monster attacks, they keep to themselves. No one wants to get close enough to find out more; it could be dangerous.

They don't _seem_ very dangerous to Vidalia, based on what little she's seen of them. Rose, the pink one that Greg is dating(?), is pretty huge, but she doesn't seem scary or anything, just kind of flirty. There's the really tall one with the square hair who never talks, and the pointy one who constantly looks like she's sucking on a lemon. Amethyst is way friendlier than those two. She seems to have started following her and Greg around like a puppy, and is about as intimidating. She's filled with seemingly endless questions, and watches people with these huge round eyes, and if you wanna distract her, all you need is a handful of chips or even a stick.

The purple girl seems to like Vidalia a lot. And though she's pretty weird, Vi thinks she likes her back. She's fun to paint, if nothing else.

But she's _really_ not in the mood for baby sitting right now.

"Why are you crying?" Amethyst asks, coming closer.

Vidalia shakes her head. "Look, kid, not right now."

"I heard you and Greg shouting. Did Greg make you cry?" Her expression is suddenly very fierce. A bright light burns on her chest, and the next thing Vidalia knows, she's wielding a freaking _whip_. "Because if he did, I'll go beat him up!"

"Woah! Woah, no, no! Look, Greg didn't make me cry," says Vidalia. "Or— well, he didn't but it's not his fault— or—" She slumps. "The guy you should be beating up is long gone."

"Well, where'd he go? I can warp anywhere on the planet!"

There's something so certain in her tone that makes Vidalia thinks that yeah, maybe the girl can. But she just laughs, a dark, bitter laugh with no humour. "I wouldn't even no where the look. That's the problem."

She's tired. She's so, so tired. She's spent all her energy yelling and crying and stomping and panicking, and now she lets herself fall onto her butt with a loud thump of sand.

The kid, somehow, is still around. The whip's gone, though. Thankfully. Amethyst crouches close and asks, "Who d'you want to find, anyway? And what did he do?"

"Guy's name is Marty." And then, a moment later she adds, "He knocked me up."

Immediately, Amethyst bristles. "He beat you up?!"

"No!" Damn, course the kid wouldn't get slang. "I mean, he got me pregnant."

Amethyst calms a little, but not a lot. "What's that mean?"

"That means— um, that means I've got a baby in my tummy."

"What? Woah!" Immediately she races forward, and presses her face right up against Vidalia's stomach. "How d'you know?"

"I just do."

"Did you eat it?"

Vidalia jerks back, giving a half-yelp, half-laugh. "What? No!"

"I've never eaten a baby before," says Amethyst. She sounds thoughtful. "Was it tasty?"

"I told you, I didn't _eat_ the baby."

"Then how did it get in your tummy?"

"Well, it's not actually in my tummy. It's in this thing called a womb." Straining back to high school biology, Vidalia points to the approximate area.

"How'd it get in _there_ , then?"

"I—" Vidalia begins, wondering how the hell she got herself into this situation. And then she thinks, ' _Sure, why not_?' Kid's gonna have to learn about this sometime or other. "Do you know about kissing?"

"Sure! I've seen Rose and Pearl do it loads. Rose and Greg too," she adds, belatedly.

Vidalia blinks. She's deathly curious, but she stores her questions away as something to probe Greg about later. "Kissing can be fun" she says. "And if people like the kissing, then sometimes there's this thing they do after—"

"Do you mean fusion?"

"Huh?"

"Fusion." Amethyst bangs her two fists together, and Vidalia thinks the girl might actually know what she means, until she adds, "You don't have to kiss to fuse though. You just have to dance, and then your bodies glow and you turn into one really huge person."

"Um. No. Definitely not that."

Amethyst nods. "Right. I forgot. Humans can't fuse. _I_ can, though. It's super fun!"

Vidalia digs her hands into the sand, feeling ridiculous. This should just be the kind of imaginative nonsense that comes out of any kid's mouth, but— well, Amethyst is _purple_. And Vidalia's seen her into animals and glow and make whips appear out of nowhere. She speaks of this 'fusion' thing with such flippant certainty that Vidalia can't doubt that it's real.

'Human', Amethyst had said, like she _wasn't_ one. Vidalia's always known the magical ladies aren't normal, but now she's wondering what she's dealing with, _exactly_.

"So what's this thing humans do after kissing, then?"

Well, _whatever_ Amethyst is, it seems that Vidalia is about to give the Talk.

She asks Amethyst to go and fetch a piece of driftwood, which Vidalia uses to draw pictures in the sand as she explains. Amethyst listens with a surprising amount of patience. And a surprising lack of giggling. Vi can remember her sex-ed class from when she was thirteen; there has been a lot of laughing, blushing, bad innuendo, and refusal to touch perfectly ordinary bananas. Amethyst meanwhile seems to have absolutely zero embarrassment about the whole lesson, though she does giggle at certain parts and say, "That sounds silly."

Vidalia can only shrug at that. She's not exactly wrong.

Once the explanation is finished, Amethyst says, "So you had sex with this Marty guy? And now you're 'pregnant'?"

Vidalia clenches her eyes shut. "Pretty much."

"Cool! Wow, a real baby. You said it won't take too long for it to come out, right? What're you gonna name it? Can I play with it once it's come out? I've seen babies before, they look really cute, but Pearl never lets me get too close, she said that they're dirty and that anyway I might hurt them, but I'd be really gentle, I promise—"

She's cut off by the sound of Vidalia crying.

"…Vi?" she says.

Vidalia gulps for air. "I don't know if I even _want_ a baby."

Amethyst blinks, startled. "But then why did you have sex—?"

"Because it's fun. Really fun. And Marty— I don't know, he was this new guy in town, claimed he was some hot shot music agent. Said he thought my art was cool. We hung out, got a few drinks." Vidalia shakes her head. "It was just gonna be some fun. One night kinda thing. He promised me he'd used protection, he _promised_ —"

She goes silent for several long moments, breathing heavily.

"And now it's two months later," she manages, "And my period hasn't come and the test turned blue and I'm _pregnant_ , and that asshole is nowhere to be found."

Cautiously, Amethyst comes and sits besides her, wrapping an arm around her in a nervous hug. It feels… strange. The kid's skin has a texture like plastic, and it feels cool. Unnaturally cool.

But the hug itself is nice.

"Do you not want a baby?" Amethyst asks.

"I… I don't know," says Vi. "I thought— well, maybe one day. But I'm only twenty three! I can barely take care of myself, let alone a— and I mean, I'm an _artist_. I live in the middle of nowhere! How am 'posed to afford, like, diapers and food and shit?"

For a long while, neither of them says anything, the two of them just listening to the crash and roll of the waves in the darkness.

"Can you get rid of the baby?" Amethyst eventually asks.

"I—" Vidalia begins. "Yeah. There's a way. It's called an abortion. But they can be really hard to get. And I don't know if I even—"

She doesn't finish the sentence.

"If you don't want the baby, don't have it," Amethyst says.

There's something heavy in her tone, and Vidalia looks over, surprised. Amethyst is scowling at the ground, her expression more serious than it's ever seemed before. Vidalia realises she doesn't know who her parents are, if she even _has_ any. "Amethyst…"

Amethyst clenches her eyes shut, and now it looks like she might be the one to start crying. "The Gems who made me didn't even stick around to find me," she says, in a hollow voice. "I was alone for ages, until Rose and the others showed up.

"So," she says, suddenly sharp, "you should only have a baby if you really want one."

Amethyst had always seemed… so alive. Always running around, laughing, playing, getting into mischief. Now she seems so quiet, and lonely.

Vidalia reaches out, gives her knee a comforting squeeze. "Sounds like those guys were assholes. Just like Marty." Amethyst looks at her side-long. "They don't have a clue what they missed out on. You're pretty cool."

"What? You mean that?"

Vidalia laughs. "Sure I do. You've got spunk, kid."

Amethyst pulls out of the hug, chest puffing up. "I'm not a kid! I'm almost five-thousand years old!"

Vi laughs— from disbelief or joy, she's not sure. Maybe both. "Whatever. You're still really cool, Amethyst."

Amethyst looks away, but Vidalia still catches the pleased smile.

For awhile more, they just sit there on the sand, staring out towards the dark ocean, listening to the roll of waves. At some point, Vidalia's hand moves to rest on her stomach.

"So, you gonna keep the baby?"

"I don't know," Vidalia admits. "Guess I'll think about it."

Amethyst nods. "If you do," she says, "I'll help you take care of it. What do babies even need, anyway? Do you gotta water them, like plants?"

Vidalia gives a low chuckle. "I think it's a _little_ more complicated than that. I guess we could work it out together."

oOoOoOo

 **Author's Note:** I have this head-canon, that the reason that Amethyst was clearly so good with baby!Steven (besides general personality and temperament) is that she had practice helping out Vidalia with Sour Cream.

As an aside, metamorphism is one of the ways rocks are formed.


End file.
